In her exploration of humanity’s paradoxical attraction to toxicity, Rottenberg has reframed the artist studio as an incubator for the regenerative production of her Lampshares, a series of functional sculptures that she began in 2023. Working alongside Inner City Green Team and Gary Dusek in New York, Rottenberg combines carved bittersweet vines that choke forests in Upstate New York with reclaimed plastic that has been mined and extracted as a natural resource and is now re-molded into ‘urban gemstones.’ The natural and the artificial blend together, with Rottenberg’s processing of the plastic recasting its smooth, shiny surfaces into imperfect, handmade-looking forms. Sharing the seductive but unsettling combination of lyricism and wit that characterizes the artist’s practice, the Lampshares bring the concerns with capitalist systems of production that Rottenberg has previously animated primarily through metaphorical and conceptual works into the sculptural space. Imbued with new meaning and value through regenerative systems of creation, these otherwise toxic and invasive materials are transformed into unique lamps that propose a creative alternative to current, extractive systems of mass production and consumption.